On the margins of a minority : leprosy, madness, and disability among the Jews of medieval Europe

著者

書誌事項

On the margins of a minority : leprosy, madness, and disability among the Jews of medieval Europe

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner ; translated by Haim Watzman

Wayne State University Press, 2014

タイトル別名

Ḥarigim be-ʻal korḥam

大学図書館所蔵 件 / 1

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注記

Translated from Hebrew

Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-263) and index

収録内容

  • Leprosy as a concept
  • Social attitudes toward lepers
  • What is madness?
  • Social attitudes toward the insane
  • The physically impaired
  • Disability in sacred and private space

内容説明・目次

内容説明

In medieval Europe, the much larger Christian population regarded Jews as their inferiors, but how did both Christians and Jews feel about those who were marginalised within the Ashkenazi Jewish community? In On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe, author Ephraim Shoham-Steiner explores the life and plight of three of these groups. Shoham-Steiner draws on a wide variety of late-tenth- to fifteenth-century material from both internal (Jewish) as well as external (non-Jewish) sources to reconstruct social attitudes toward these "others," including lepers, madmen and the physically impaired. Shoham-Steiner considers how the outsiders were treated by their respective communities, while also maintaining a delicate balance with the surrounding non-Jewish community. On the Margins of a Minority is structured in three pairs of chapters addressing each of these three marginal groups. The first pair deals with the moral attitude toward leprosy and its sufferers; the second with the manifestations of madness and its causes as seen by medieval men and women, and the effect these signs had on the treatment of the insane; the third with impaired and disabled individuals, including those with limited mobility, manual dysfunction, deafness and blindness. Shoham-Steiner also addresses questions of the religious meaning of impairment in light of religious conceptions of the ideal body. He concludes with a bibliography of sources and studies that informed the research, including useful midrashic, exegetical, homiletic, ethical and guidance literature and texts from responsa and halakhic rulings. Understanding and exploring attitudes toward groups and individuals considered "other" by mainstream society provides us with information about marginalised groups, as well as the inner social mechanisms at work in a larger society. On the Margins of a Minority will appeal to scholars of Jewish medieval history as well as readers interested in the growing field of disability studies.

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